Dr. Van Houtan Environmental Science & Policy Division Duke Dr. Van Houtan's faculty page Mon, 02/20/2023 - 12:40pm Athens Seminars Please join us Monday February 20 at 12:40 pm for a seminar by Dr. Kyle Van Houtan, a faculty candidate in Marine Conservation and Sustainability in the Department of Marine Sciences. Details are below. Title: Deus ex machina: Machine Learning applications for marine science and conservation Abstract: Assessing ecological dynamics over relevant scales of space and time is essential to identify the full magnitude and key drivers of changes in the ocean. Management challenges, however, are often urgent and complex and benefit from the latest contemporary approaches to monitoring, data, and modeling. In this seminar, I will demonstrate how my colleagues and I have used machine learning to address key conservation problems in four settings – estuary restoration, shark fin trafficking, global biogeography, and pelagic food webs – using natural language processing, artificial neural networks, and random forest approaches. I will further situate such research programs within U.S. federal science strategies, hopefully offering novel insights and more informed benchmarks to build coastal resiliency and social equity. The speaker (and all upcoming faculty candidates) will be presenting in person in Athens (Room 239), but the talk will be broadcast to the Skidaway Auditorium and available to watch on Zoom (https://zoom.us/j/97461643834). As usual, the room will open at 12:20 pm and the talk will begin at 12:40 pm. The seminar will be recorded for those who cannot attend.
